Saturday, June 29, 2013

MDT 2013 Preview - A quick review of script changes

If you hadn't already heard, MDT 2013 Preview is now available for download.  You'll need a Connect account to access the group.  You also need to download ADK for Windows 8.1 Preview.  Johan Arwidmark has a good breakdown of support and some of the changes at his blog, as does Ronni Pedersen.    Now that the Preview is out, I wanted to dig into the script files that came with it.

Since a lot of what I do when attempting to help people and answer questions on the MDT Forums revolves around getting under the hood and looking at the scripts, I thought I'd look at the scripts that MDT 2013 Preview was released with and compare them against the scripts from MDT 2012 Update 1.  This can also help people who are looking at upgrading, but have customized these files to their unique needs.

The first thing I noticed is that... not a lot has changed.  This release seems primarily focused on adding the new operating systems (Windows 8.1 Preview / Server 2012 R2 Preview) as well as SCCM 2012 R2 and dropping the old ones (XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008), as well as support for WAIK, ADK 8, SCCM 2007, and SCCM 2012 SP1. [See chart on Ronnie's post]

When drilling into the files, I looked at a couple of the core ones I tend to touch and found these didn't change at all or only updated the version information:
  • BDD_Autorun.wsf (version details)
  • LiteTouch.vbs (exact)
  • LiteTouch.wsf (version details)
  • LTICleanup.wsf (version details)
  • LTISuspend.wsf (version details)
  • LTISysprep.wsf (version details)
  • ZTIDiskpart.wsf (version details)
  • ZTIGather.xml (exact)
  • ZTIUtility.vbs (version details)
I did note that ServerManager.xml changed (where the definition of the Roles/Features are stored) and it changed exactly as expected to support the new/old OS changes.  The only file I noted that really did change was LTIApply.wsf:
  • Added sBCDStore, sBootFile, sBootMuiFile
  • Now supports 32-bit UEFI images and booting
  • In ApplyImage(), now cleans up previous BCD for UEFI
  • Missing:  Changes from KB2797676.
The change of supporting 32-bit UEFI images and booting is notable as there are many 32-bit only tablet devices now on the market (like the Dell Latitude 10) and this might make dealing with them a bit easier.  The other note is that the changes in the KB are not carried into this release (yet), so if you made this change in the past, you'll need to make it again after installing 2013 Preview.

This also means that if you've customized a lot of the scripts or the wizard panes, it should be as simple as copying your customized versions of the scripts into the MDT 2013 Preview scripts folder and things working as expected (unless you customized LTIApply.wsf, obviously).

Let me know if you find other changes that I haven't yet. : )

- DCtheGeek

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